New contributions to understand animal size fluctuations in the western mediterranean: The bronze age Balearic Islands

Abstract

In this paper, measurements of 2.012 bone remains from four different domestic species (sheep, goats, cattle and pigs) originating from 33 Bronze Age archaeological sites from the Balearic Islands, mainland Iberia, southern France and Sardinia, and spanning about 2500 years (3700-700 cal. BCE) have been compared. The results show that a decrease in animal size occurred in the Balearic Islands during the Bronze Age. It was not a local phenomenon but rather was a general pattern that happened in different territories. Yet it was more marked on the islands. The evidence shows that the four analyzed species were not affected in the same way and it was a nonlinear phenomenon. Indeed, during the Late Bronze Age some archaeological sites from the Balearics had taller caprines compared with the other contemporaneous places, also on the continent. A multi-factor explanation for these fluctuations is proposed in this paper, showing that animal sizes generally decreased during late prehistory -especially cattle- and this process could reflect different factors such as a combination of limited feeding, increased human pressure and endogamy.